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Post-post-racial America.

When Barack Obama was elected President in 2008, many declared that we were entering a post-racial time. I didn’t believe it. The persons stating we had entered a post-racial era were white.

So with the Washington Post news headlines, a small town in Georgia is contending with a KKK flag, I state with confidence that we are post-post-racial. Or not-not-racial, a double negative. We took two steps back. Racism is alive and well among us. The hateful ugly among us feel or maybe they are, empowered.

And of the many reactions of the locals cataloged in the article, the one that cut to my quick was “a young black man who stood there crying.” He was looking at a sign celebrating a homegrown old-timey US terrorist organization, the KKK. Homegrown terrorists who terrorize people who look just.like.him. Let that sink in. This is 2017.

In an attempt to end on a more positive note, while cleaning up a kitchen at a writer’s retreat, I asked, “How will we know when we are post-racial?”

The answer came from a beautiful, thoughtful, wise woman with lots of life experience: